I was reading Sun Tzu, but then, I came to the realization that video games these days don't have the same type of strategy. In a real battle, you have to worry about things like whether or not to make camp here or there. Also, in real battle, you need to try to minimize the damage done to the property. You also have to use spies and convert spies to gain information, which, in a real battle, determines victory or defeat. You should have to determine at what time of day to attack or retreat. You won't have an overhead view telling you everything your troops see, and instead you will need to make sure your information lines are working. An army lives on its stomach, and you will be able to burn the enemy's food supplies while protecting your own.

This may seem to be complicated, and indeed it is. However, there have been more complicated things (i.e. Dwarf Fortress, particle physics), so it's a matter of finding a very dedicated team, and funding might be taken care of with indiegogo or Kickstarter. This would best be taken care of by something similar to Dwarf Fortress (i.e. develop it an indefinite amount of time but let people play what you've worked on so far).

Edit:Basically, a game that covers the overall war itself. A game in which your numbers play an important role in the role, but do not determine the results.

By the way, the setting doesn't have to be modern.

Oh, and to clarify, my thoughts while reading the book were "These would make a very fun and strategical game", not something like "Games should be more realistic". I'm just exploring ways in which realism could add fun and strategy as well as tactics.

I think there are already really in-depth War games out there (trying to find this site that listed some of them, but I can't seem to find it x.x) but remember, those games tend to get overly complex and is not suited for casual gamers, which is where the money is at. It's also hard to make good enough AI for such a game.

Are you talking about real time strategy?I think there are fairly realistic turn-based strategy games (where the information lines and the autonomous unit behaviour is modelled by the turns and much more time to think.).

Otherwise, in a real time strategy game, if you play as the commander/admiral, you would just look at some green screens with green dots and text, which is only interesting for a small number of gamers.But I think there are games like that...

I used to be in an artillery unit. We had a battery if six howitzers in our company and about 150 marines. Our unit was composed of the following:
-Supply: Takes care of guns, beans and bullets.
-Gun Line: The crew running each howitzer
-Fire Direction Control (FDC): The section which calculates the needed powder, rounds, fuzes, tube elevation angles, and tube lateral angles to put a round on target.
-Forward Observers (FO): These guys are the target spotters who communicate to the FDC about what they see on the battlefield
-Comm: These guys run wires between all of the sections and maintain radios and antennas so that everyone can talk
-Local Security: People patrolling the perimeter to make sure nobody is trying to sneak in
-Command: The officers who decide when the unit moves and where the unit moves

Not in our unit, but available assets:
-Counter-battery radar: Spots the trajectory of a round in flight and calculates its point of impact and point of origin to a precise grid coordinate
-Signals Intelligence: Listens to the airwaves and triangulates the position of a broadcasting station

So, you could make a more realistic "artillery" game by adding all of these elements. If you shoot the FO's, then the artillery unit no longer has eyes. If you shoot the FDC, the artillery loses its brain. If you shoot the comm, the artillery loses its mouth and ears. If you shoot the gun line, the artillery can't shoot anymore. A functioning artillery unit works like an oiled engine, and if you take out any of its gears, it seizes up. So, imagine you've got a forward observer attached to a company of infantry in a vast battlefield. An enemy sniper spots the dude with a radio strapped to his back and shoots him first (they have one of the shortest life expectancies in a fight). The FO is dead. Artillery support is out of the picture. If you wanted to play a game of artillery vs. artillery, it's now broken because the system is so fragile.

Suppose that you and your opponent have counter-battery radar. You don't know where the enemy artillery is positioned and they don't know where you are. The first person to shoot their guns reveals their position, so you want to make sure that you're shooting to disable the enemy artillery before they can shoot you. A round can have a flight time of up to two or three minutes, depending on angle and distance. This is more than enough time for a good artillery unit to shoot back. So, two emplaced artillery batteries facing off against each other will be a contest of training, response times, and who can move out of position the fastest.

This realism doesn't make for much "fun" in a game. Most artillery games are much more simple where you've got artillery cannons facing off against each other and you have to make a guess at the needed power and elevation. The game has abstracted away the complexity, added some simplicity, broke some reality (vision), and made the skill element of the game the "FDC" (which in reality is a precision science with little guessing involved). So: "Reality/realism" is not necessarily "fun" and "fun" is not necessarily "reality/realism".

There are some games that run an artillery unit semi realistically with you needing to have vision on a target from another source before they can fire. So you could shoot that and cut off vision. They don't have radio lines because RTS games don't really work that way.

There are some theoretical MMO games where there are no NPCs and are long range weapons where you could effectively simulate an artillery unit. But obviously you can't do it in single player games because it would require simulating several human brains.

attss, Sun Tsu is a great read eh? The facets of conflict are incredible to consider even in dealing with simple aspects of life like arguments or business. I think the trick to using Sun Tsu as inspiration for game design is to consider the aspects that Sun Tsu explores (like you mentioned) and apply as many as you can to a fun game of strategy and combat. I'm not entirely sure that realism is the key, I think its more important to allow players to learn about the same aspects you're learning from the Sun Tsu text by experiencing the importance of these aspects in a command and combat setting.

I always felt the best way to explore this is to start from the top and explore the major faces of command and soldiering as you descend the hierarchy. Sovereigns or representatives for the people that make the choice to attack or request defense from attack decide on the "people's goals" of the military. The general or strategist has to decide the major aspects that Sun Tsu explores I think once this general knows himself and his enemy he should then create "intelligence/military strategic objectives". The officers in command of these objectives are charged with creating "operational waypoints" for the groups they are charged with. Lastly you have field officers issuing "tactical orders" to successfully take or hold each waypoint on the way to winning each objectives and claiming victory for the people's goals.

This is the way I hope to explore Sun Tsu's text. By enabling players the chance to earn their way from being a soldier to becoming a general and understand these perspectives of conflict before exploring the challenge of command to achieving the "people's goals" (the game's story).

I really dig this stuff, so if you start on a project attss (or anyone else) and you need another designer/animator msg me. Or if you're interested in a very visually simplified design I'm working on (that explores the above) msg me as well! Good post.

Actually, I feel the opposite. In games frequently you need to worry about more things than in real life. For example a medieval baron, he would just say "go there" and the army will go there and they will worry about food themselves and other things. Actually, the leader frequently could be quite incompetent and it still would work out fine

Note that there were some real life presidents of certain countries that were making noobish mistakes of forgetting (or even not knowing in the first place) where exactly a certain another country is located Something not imaginable in a strategy game

Realistic strategy should deal with LESS details, because that's how it works in real life, the supreme leader have TONS on generals/minsters that make decisions instead of him.
Of course that's not exactly fun, because players want not realistic games where you have MORE control than in real life situation, so they want to dvelve in MORE details...
Plus, if you make it more realistic by reducing the details they will accuse you of making it nonrealistic Oh joys of game design

There are some games that run an artillery unit semi realistically with you needing to have vision on a target from another source before they can fire. So you could shoot that and cut off vision. They don't have radio lines because RTS games don't really work that way.

What do you mean, "RTS games don't really work that way"? One certainly could build a RTS game which works that way, and like OP, I think games could get very interesting mechanics from this stuff. Using electronic warfare units to cut radio communications between units at strategic times, etc.

Games containing actual strategy do not receive a lot of innovation because they don't get much investment in general. They don't get much investment because their very nature is to be aimed at a small niche group of players: those who are both able to think, and actually want to do so while playing a videogame. Then, there's a problem specific to these kinds of mechanics: uncertainty and unstability introduced by fragile communication would probably make it impossible to code an AI that isn't retarded. And if you can't have a good AI, you must have multiplayer and critical mass of players, which is unlikely to happen for a radically new kind of game whose genre has a low player base to begin with.

They don't have radio lines because RTS games don't really work that way.

That may be true of current RTS offerings, but given we're talking purely theoretically at the moment it might be an interesting thought experiment to consider:What would an RTS be like if they did work that way? (that is, featuring lines of communication).

I think the player would have less direct control over individual units: instead of giving very specific instructions on movement, placement and activity of units (move here, shoot that, deploy this), the player would give more general instructions (hold this area, engage this target) which the units would then go about doing in a more autonomous fashion.

Rather than individual units (1 infantryman, 1 rocket soldier, etc.) you would probably command small quads composed of those different individual parts. You would give the squad their objectives, but it would largely be up to their command AI as to how they achieved it. For example, you might order a squad to defend a group of buildings, but it would be up to the AI to decide to put a sniper on the roof (or not).

If a line of communication was cut, you would be unable to send or receive information from a squad -- they would probably be hidden by fog-of-war, and would continue to act autonomously based on whatever orders you had already issued until communication was restored. If all objectives were achieved they may simply hold their position, or they might try to restore communication for themselves. Perhaps you could influence this behaviour by setting priorities.

Obviously, all of this would rely on more sophisticated AI than is often present. Individual units would still operate in much the same way as usual, but rather than receiving orders from the player they would receive orders from the AI for their squad, which would be trying to achieve the objectives set by the player.

Depending on the type of the lines of communication you might have a delayed flow of information. Perhaps a radio line allows you to immediately change a squads objectives and see immediate progress updates, but if the radio is down (jammed, dead operator, transmitter destroyed, whatever) you might have the alternative of sending runners back and forth with orders. Your units would not be fully lost in fog-of-war, but you would get "snapshot" updates a minute or two after events actually transpired. You could issue a new objective, but it wouldn't reach the squad immediately, and they would continue to act on the previous objective until it arrived. Imagine the tension of realising you need to preserve a bridge you had previously ordered destroyed, but not knowing if the new orders would arrive before the squad blew it up.

As noted above, this would probably appeal to a smaller niche of players, as many are used to and expect the more direct control that existing titles give them. That niche may or may not be worth pursuing.

In a discussion of different game play styles, you should never feel restricted by the styles of existing games. You might find some fantastic and different ideas by considering something completely different, and you'll probably find some terrible ideas as well (and perhaps gain a better understanding of why existing games are the way they are) -- you'll probably get a lot of "ok" ideas that aren't terrible but need more work, or which are fantastic in theory but may be tricky to implement; if you can make them work, you might just have a new sub-genre or genre on your hands!

Actually, the artillery game sounds really cool! I've thought a lot about incorporating various tactical or strategic mechanics into games, but honestly I never knew there was quite so much involved in artillery (I've seen some awesome stuff on the newer, automated guns, and they look so much like tanks that I just kind of assumed they maneuvered and operated like long-range tanks).
Honestly, I was really disappointed by the Art of War from an inspiration standpoint. It is a fascinating book, and remarkable for how coolly and rationally it evaluates strategy, but I think RTS games really need to move closer to the ground, not further from it. The valuable unused territory is in high level tactics and low level strategy, not high level strategy or diplomacy (or, for that matter, economic management or individual combat). That is not to say that those things don't belong at all, but I think they've all been done enough times to be familiar and slightly stale (unless of course you have some really interesting twist).

The vast majority of RTS games have TERRIBLE economic management. It is stale, but only because the implementation is crap. However most gamers seem to dislike economic management for ruining the purity of their tactics, a complaint that is somewhat ironic given that the most clever military solutions tend to arise from the economic disparity between two sides.

Actually, the artillery game sounds really cool! I've thought a lot about incorporating various tactical or strategic mechanics into games, but honestly I never knew there was quite so much involved in artillery (I've seen some awesome stuff on the newer, automated guns, and they look so much like tanks that I just kind of assumed they maneuvered and operated like long-range tanks).Honestly, I was really disappointed by the Art of War from an inspiration standpoint. It is a fascinating book, and remarkable for how coolly and rationally it evaluates strategy, but I think RTS games really need to move closer to the ground, not further from it. The valuable unused territory is in high level tactics and low level strategy, not high level strategy or diplomacy (or, for that matter, economic management or individual combat). That is not to say that those things don't belong at all, but I think they've all been done enough times to be familiar and slightly stale (unless of course you have some really interesting twist).

Well, actually, now that I think about it, no RTS has ever come close to emulating the realities of warfare and the horrors it brings. I suppose a game like that wouldn't be much fun for many people and would serve to cause more distaste for what war is really about (certainly not glory and heroism): accidentally killing civilians, men, women, children, etc. having lives turned upside down, homes and families destroyed, the sorrow and heartbreak of a lost loved one, close friend, true gut-wrenching fear for life, complete boredom and misery, desperation, lost limbs, fatherless children, etc... all because people can't get along. If a game ever came truly close to describing warfare and all the bad shit that comes with it, it would be followed by a shitstorm of media controversy ("omg! a game where you kill kids! the kids throw grenades at you! a game where a crowded market place gets blown up by a suicide bomber! a game where men and women are raped! we can't sell this to children!") and would never sell well. Instead, we get games like Red Alert 2 where we've got cute little blimps flying around dropping bombs on military installations (in reality, B-17's dropped massive amounts of fire bombs on major cities causing huge fire storms, killing hundreds of thousands of people through burns and asphixiation). I worry that war games turn into a propaganda outlet to glorify warfare instead of humanizing it properly. But, a properly humanized game of war wouldn't be entertaining and thus wouldn't sell, so you've got these competing business interests and designer interests where the ultimate goal is viceral "entertainment" even though its a participation in a hollywood inspired delusions of what war is about. Then you get starrey eyed kids running to the army recruiters office with no idea of what they're really getting into. Ugh.I suppose a properly made war game would be an anti-recruitment, anti-war game. One bullet, one peice of shrapnel, and your life is effectively over.

I'm not a huge fan of this kind of game, but I thought I'd throw a game suggestion. If you haven't played it already, you might get a few ideas

Have you ever played Mount and Blade? It's a bit deceiving at first, because it *looks* like some kind of Elder Scrolls with lower production value. It's medieval, first person and you swing your weapon by clicking... After a few hours playing you realize that it's a completely different gameplay! COMPLETELY. It's the closest thing I've ever seen to a realistic war simulation. It's really hard to explain, you might need to play. Actually, playing might not be enough, you might need to read and see some videos of gameplay.

Actually, I feel the opposite. In games frequently you need to worry about more things than in real life. For example a medieval baron, he would just say "go there" and the army will go there and they will worry about food themselves and other things. Actually, the leader frequently could be quite incompetent and it still would work out fine

Note that there were some real life presidents of certain countries that were making noobish mistakes of forgetting (or even not knowing in the first place) where exactly a certain another country is located Something not imaginable in a strategy game

Realistic strategy should deal with LESS details, because that's how it works in real life, the supreme leader have TONS on generals/minsters that make decisions instead of him. Of course that's not exactly fun, because players want not realistic games where you have MORE control than in real life situation, so they want to dvelve in MORE details... Plus, if you make it more realistic by reducing the details they will accuse you of making it nonrealistic Oh joys of game design

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Sun Tzu is obsolete, it was written for old times when armies were tiny and the ruler was able to personally supervise the whole operation. Nowadays a stupid division is 10,000 men, which is more that whole armies in ancient times. After Napoleon times it's all about selecting sub liders, not about doing it yourself (also that's what was the cause of Napoleon's demise, English made a policy to always avoid troops lead by Napoleon and attack armies of his generals instead, while Napoleon was a superior military genius his generals were on average below the skill of average English general, so he lost in the end). Even if you are not a ruler of a country, but supervise a bigger operation (like WWII Normandy landing or Torch) all you do is select the sub generals that would lead the troops and make all decision by themselves and distribute the supplies.

But players want Sun Tzu, they strive to be a small size army superior leader (without anyiomne above giving out orders) that can oversee everything and don't deal with delegation of power to lower ranks That's completely non realistic (unless you go for a proper non modern setting), but it's pointless to argue with players

In short players want to make decisions on strategic level and operational level and tactical level at the same time. Which is absolutely unrealistic and leads to heavy micromanagement. But still they want it... They want to decide what units factories produce on country level and then decide on which side a single archer should point on the battlefield (so in the end we need to dumb the army size down because it would lead to insanely amount of small decisions to make by the player).

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Sun Tzu is obsolete, it was written for old times when armies were tiny and the ruler was able to personally supervise the whole operation. Nowadays a stupid division is 10,000 men, which is more that whole armies in ancient times. After Napoleon times it's all about selecting sub liders, not about doing it yourself (also that's what was the cause of Napoleon's demise, English made a policy to always avoid troops lead by Napoleon and attack armies of his generals instead, while Napoleon was a superior military genius his generals were on average below the skill of average English general, so he lost in the end). Even if you are not a ruler of a country, but supervise a bigger operation (like WWII Normandy landing or Torch) all you do is select the sub generals that would lead the troops and make all decision by themselves and distribute the supplies.

But players want Sun Tzu, they strive to be a small size army superior leader (without anyiomne above giving out orders) that can oversee everything and don't deal with delegation of power to lower ranks That's completely non realistic (unless you go for a proper non modern setting), but it's pointless to argue with players

In short players want to make decisions on strategic level and operational level and tactical level at the same time. Which is absolutely unrealistic and leads to heavy micromanagement. But still they want it... They want to decide what units factories produce on country level and then decide on which side a single archer should point on the battlefield (so in the end we need to dumb the army size down because it would lead to insanely amount of small decisions to make by the player).

Also, we could have the player be an officer or the leader of guirella forces or something. He could have officers below him who take care of micromanaging, and the soldiers would do obvious tasks automatically (although it may be possible to schedule when they do what, like when should they wake up).

Also, we could have the player be an officer or the leader of guirella forces or something. He could have officers below him who take care of micromanaging, and the soldiers would do obvious tasks automatically (although it may be possible to schedule when they do what, like when should they wake up).

Right. Hey, have you played Mount and Blade yet? It's kind of like that. Sorry for being annoying

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

Sun Tzu is obsolete, it was written for old times when armies were tiny and the ruler was able to personally supervise the whole operation. Nowadays a stupid division is 10,000 men, which is more that whole armies in ancient times. After Napoleon times it's all about selecting sub liders, not about doing it yourself (also that's what was the cause of Napoleon's demise, English made a policy to always avoid troops lead by Napoleon and attack armies of his generals instead, while Napoleon was a superior military genius his generals were on average below the skill of average English general, so he lost in the end). Even if you are not a ruler of a country, but supervise a bigger operation (like WWII Normandy landing or Torch) all you do is select the sub generals that would lead the troops and make all decision by themselves and distribute the supplies.

But players want Sun Tzu, they strive to be a small size army superior leader (without anyiomne above giving out orders) that can oversee everything and don't deal with delegation of power to lower ranks That's completely non realistic (unless you go for a proper non modern setting), but it's pointless to argue with players

In short players want to make decisions on strategic level and operational level and tactical level at the same time. Which is absolutely unrealistic and leads to heavy micromanagement. But still they want it... They want to decide what units factories produce on country level and then decide on which side a single archer should point on the battlefield (so in the end we need to dumb the army size down because it would lead to insanely amount of small decisions to make by the player).

I would have to disagree about Sun Tzu being 'obsolete', rather I would say that as wars have increased in magnitude (a 'brush fire' war involves several hundred thousand soldiers) his advice has remained applicable at a lower level. Sun Tzu mostly discusses the logistics (generally delegated throughout all levels of an army) of victory, and the philosophy of war, not so much particular strategies.Also, what leads you to believe that players smaller armies and more micro-management? I ask because I've tried to discuss strategy games with everyone I know who enjoys them, and I've found that what they say they want from a strategy game varies tremendously. I've heard anything from "I'd rather manage my troops without any directly controlled combat" to "I'd like to work with a team of other players, where each player has a specific role". I have difficulty deciding on my favorite aspect of strategy games, because I find all of them so enjoyable.

Actually, the idea is that you are the general. Or a officer or something. If you read Sun Tzu, then you would see what I'm trying to say. My idea would give the player more emergent strategies to try out, as well as to make it so that, even if you're outnumbered and cornered, the situation isn't futile.

I think if you are going to make the game historical, or have it take place in a fictional setting where conflicts are smaller, then it seems plausible for a single general to command a combat force, top to bottom (I don't much like micro as a representation of reality, but as a game mechanic it can be very fun). However, if your setting is modern, recent history, near future, or any fictional large-scale conflict, then it really does seem inconsistent to ask a player to both manage an empire (or even a small region) and tell individual people what to do and how to do it.

Hierarchy structuring and command delegation is half the challenge of strategy, its an important part of Sun Tsu's teaching and a greatly overlooked challenge in the strategy game world. StarCraft could explore this idea since each unit has a kill count. By giving units with high kill count "reinforcement" slots a player could link other units to it. That way a player can select any unit from that group and it would auto select the leader. Instead of issuing tactical commands to this "leader unit" a player could issue operational objectives/waypoints and the tactical decisions could be made by the leader. This would create a stronger tie between the player and the units as well since these leader units are created not just by the player's choices but by the chaos of combat as well. This explores luck in strategy. Everyone likes to keep something lucky around.

You don't need to give the player the ability to do it all, just give them a choice of what they would prefer to explore. The achievements system isn't cutting mustered for a rewarding player's anymore. The best way to reward players for success in games is opening up new perspectives in games. Giving the player the choice to look at the game from another point of view with a whole new set of tools and learning curve to explore.

Sun Tsu will always be relevant because conflict will always exist. The challenge of studying conflict is what games are.